I see what you’re saying. But the game isn’t what it was 70 years ago. It’s harder than ever to rebuild through the draft and that is only going to get harder with expansion teams coming in. It’s probably a luxury the game can’t afford anymore.I would happily bin off all special mechanics - priority picks, academies, zones, father-son. If you want a player badly enough, trade up. Hawthorn's 08-15 run was built on doing exactly that by trading two good players for the pick that became Luke Hodge, but could've also easily been Chris Judd or Luke Ball (or Jimmy Bartel) in 2001.
But the father-son rule has been around in some form for more than 70 years of VFL/AFL and thus the entirety of the AFL/national competition. The AFL can justifiably point to not messing with the 'fabric of the game' by leaving some form of F/S rule in place.